JAY A PRITZKER

Jay A. Pritzker, board chairman of Hyatt Corp. and Hyatt International Corp. and Chicago's leading philanthropist, was the guiding financial whiz of one of Chicago's wealthiest and most powerful families. He was a jovial man who wore his wealth lightly.

Pritzker was a dealmaker who engineered a string of savvy acquisitions to build the family's vast holdings in real estate, hotels, manufacturing, airlines, gambling and numerous other moneymaking enterprises. Yet, he once jokingly told his wife, "Cindy, don't talk to me that way. I'm a tycoon," when she asked him to take out the garbage.

He died Saturday in Northwestern Memorial Hospital after suffering a heart attack. He was 76.

Pritzker's role in the family business was to focus on legal and financial activities.

Working with his father, Abram Nicholas Pritzker; his brother Robert; and his uncle Jack, Pritzker plotted acquisitions and new ventures that greatly expanded the family's fortune. In Forbes Magazine's 1998 ranking of the 400 richest Americans, his wealth was estimated at $5 billion.

Pritzker and his brother Robert have been identified as the top philanthropists in the city. They pledged an estimated $140 million in the last seven years to charitable causes, museums and cultural institutions, mostly in the Chicago area. Their annual charitable gifts are estimated at $10 million and range from $200 to the $60 million the brothers pledged last year to the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Born in Chicago on Aug. 26, 1922, Pritzker was the eldest of three brothers. He was the grandson of Nicholas and Annie Pritzker, who emigrated from a Jewish ghetto near Kiev in Ukraine at the turn of the century.

Pritzker received his bachelor of science and law degrees from Northwestern University in 1941 and 1947, respectively.

He joined the Department of Justice in Washington but after a year returned to Chicago to become a partner in the family's law firm, Pritzker and Pritzker.

During World War II, from 1942 to 1946, he served as a Navy pilot.

Pritzker was chairman and chief executive of Hyatt Hotels Corp. and Hyatt International Corp., the family's domestic and international luxury hotel chains, which pioneered the atrium hotel. The atrium style has been widely copied by other hotel operators.

"He was early in recognizing the potential of business travel and he was a pioneer in architecture and financial techniques that are used in the industry today," said Douglas Geoga, president of Hyatt Hotels Corp. "I don't think you can overstate the esteem in which he is held by all of his colleagues."

He also was chairman of Marmon Holdings Inc., which grew during a 30-year period from a small manufacturing operation to a diversified company with annual sales of about $6 billion.

Pritzker's usual tactic was to acquire companies in trouble, often on the edge of bankruptcy, by buying them at a discount and leaving them to brother Robert to turn around financially.

Pritzker was known for his willingness to take risks and ability to put together a deal with breathtaking speed. He usually avoided hostile takeovers.

"Dad convinced us that it is not the contract that makes a deal sound but how you behave afterward," he once said. "We've bought a lot of things on just a handshake or a paragraph or two."

Like others in his family, Pritzker shunned personal publicity and in business preferred private to public companies.

In two of Pritzker's best-known deals, he engineered the highly controversial $688 million merger in 1980 of Trans Union Corp., a Chicago-based rail car manufacturer, into Marmon Holdings Inc. and bailed out the bankrupt airline Braniff International in 1983.

The Trans Union-Marmon merger, one of the largest and most complicated in Chicago history, ended up as a hostile purchase when Trans Union executives tried to buy the company themselves to prevent the sale.

The Pritzkers triumphed, but the deal cost far more than they usually paid. Marmon includes a group of manufacturing companies showing an extraordinary growth rate and ranging in scope from Hammond organs to seat belts to poultry incubators.

Pritzker was prompted to make a bid for Braniff by two retired pilots for the airline who visited him at his home where he was recuperating from a skiing accident, with most of his body in a cast.

Pritzker's intense negotiations with Braniff's creditors resulted in an agreement for $70 million in cash and loans that saved the carrier from liquidation and put its planes back in the air in 1984. Pritzker sold the airline in 1988.

In the early 1980s, the Pritzker family's business dealings with the scandal-ridden Teamsters pension fund emerged as a factor in hearings on a gambling license sought by one of their corporations for an Atlantic City casino.

The Pritzkers denied that they made payoffs to anyone in obtaining $54 million in loans from the Teamster fund and were successful in getting a license for the gambling operation.

Pritzker's father acquired the first Hyatt Hotel in the 1950s. Pritzker expanded the chain to its current size, including 109 hotels in the United States and 75 abroad, according to Hyatt spokeswoman Lori Armon.

Pritzker took Hyatt International Corp. private in 1982, after a 3 1/2-year battle with a Saudi financier who owned a large stake in the chain and shrewdly maneuvered to raise the price the family paid to buy up the stock.

In 1996, the Hyatt Regency in San Diego was the host hotel for the Republican National Convention. The Hyatt in downtown Chicago hosted the Democrats.

The family business interests over the years have included McCall's magazine, Hammond organs, Levitz furniture, casinos, insurance firms, travel agencies, cable-TV systems and companies that make everything from railway boxcars to aluminum forgings for missiles.

Pritzker, a resident of the Gold Coast, was active in a number of community and civic organizations. He was a trustee of the University of Chicago and the Orchestral Association for the Chicago Symphony.

He was a member of the Commercial Club, Lake Shore Country Club, Arts Club and Standard Club.

Though he had been in good health recently, Geoga said, Pritzker had a history of heart trouble.

In addition to Pritzker's brother Robert, survivors include his wife, Cindy; three sons, Daniel, John and Thomas; a daughter, Gigi Pucker; and 13 grandchildren.